Craving Cake Monkey Bakery

Are you sad that Hostess went out of business? What if I told you that you didn’t need to run to the store to stockpile a doomsday supply of ding-dongs, ho-hos and CupCakes? There’s a bakery in Burbank, CA that makes small bites that are just as good, if not better than Hostess, using natural ingredients and no trans fat. Ok, that doesn’t mean they’re super healthy, 0% fat, you’re eating air type great. But hey, they try over there at CMB, which is a lot more than most bakeries can say.
If you haven’t heard of Cake Monkey, you should definitely put it on your must try list. Even if you don’t reside in the SoCal area, they do ship within the US.
Since I reside in Pasadena, they delivered my order to me. I ordered the honey braised pumpkin tart, 3 gingerbread sandwiches, 3 chocolate carmel cakes, 3 black and white cakes, 3 cake monkey carrot cakes, 3 cake monkey crunch cakes, 3 big o’s, 4 (1 of each flavor of the) pop pies, 4 summer camp chocolate chip cookies, 5 inside out s’mores and 6 li’l merri’s. If you want to see some more treats that are offered, go to cakemonkeybakery.com. I know it’ll be super difficult, and you’ll want everything.
My absolute favorite (and Cocoa Bean’s favorite) are the Li’l Merri’s, which are Oatmeal Cream Pie Sandwich Cookies filled with Maple Vanilla Buttercream. It is to die for, a must order. The runner up for me is the Cake Monkey Crunch Cake, which is a Banana Cake with layers of House made Toffee Crunch and Milk Chocolate Frosting. You must; however, place an order for a minimum of 9 of the layer cakes (at least 3 of 1 flavor) as Cake Monkey is a made to order bakery, but at least you know they are freshly baked. They are a perfect party dessert, and a nice change to the typical cake, pie, or cupcake. Every one can try something different, or a little bit of everything. Since it is the holidays, it’s nice to treat yourself a little or a lot. You can have your Cake (Monkey), and eat it too!

Craving Raffi’s Place Restaurant

Have you heard of Raffi’s Place Restaurant in Glendale? If you have, then you already know how great the food is there. If you haven’t heard of it or have never eaten Raffi’s food, then you are missing out. Raffi’s is an Persian/Iranian restaurant and the food is soooooo good. It’s always a hit to serve Raffi’s when we host parties, so that’s what we did for our party over the weekend. Depending on the amount of people, we vary the quantity of our order, but we usually get the chicken and beef, mahi mahi, swordfish and salmon, with sides of vegetables: green peppers, tomatoes, and chopped cucumber salad. All catered orders come with rice, pita bread, yogurt, onions, lemons, mint leaves, radishes seasoning salt, and butter, which they tend to be very generous with. So if you don’t like waste, then ask for less of these things. Even when we do ask for less, we still have left overs.
We got our new dining table delivered the day of the party, so it was fun to dress it up for our visitors with chargers, place settings, glassware, and cute details like personalized napkin rings (with guests’ initials), candles, and a smiling Santa.
One last note, if you can’t handle things that are too spicy, don’t eat the seeds of the peppers from Raffi’s. If you’re anything like me, you’ll end up crying at the table (involuntarily) with your mouth on fire.